


A Remnant of Some Dream

by Duck_Life



Category: X-Factor (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Angst, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, It's a Wonderful Life, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2015-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-09 23:36:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3268511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set while Apocalypse is conditioning Angel to become Death. Warren starts seeing people who aren't there- one person in particular.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Remnant of Some Dream

When Warren wakes up, it’s cold. He feels sluggish, the drugs in his system worming their way through his body. With the wires stuck to him his head feels far too heavy. His shoulders feel far too light. Before letting out a low groan, he glances around the room to make sure Apocalypse isn’t there, doesn’t hear him giving any sign of protest or complaint.

If he thinks Warren’s ungrateful, if he rescinds his offer… Warren can’t handle it, having his wings ripped away from him yet again.

“Hey, Angel.”

His head jerks to the left, and there’s Bobby Drake, leaning against one of the walls of the ship as casually as if he were in the X-Factor kitchen.

Warren glances down at his shoulders, at the long and unhealed scars that disappear over his back. “I’m not sure you can call me that anymore.”

“Sure I can.” Bobby unhitches himself from the wall and moves toward Warren. “Clarence didn’t have wings either.”

“Who?”

“Clarence. The angel from _It’s A Wonderful Life_.” The faint buzz from the lights makes everything seem surreal, and the drugs aren’t helping. Warren grapples with his memory, trying to recall the movie. Black and white, Jimmy Stewart. He might have seen it once or twice. “You know that was the first movie they used actual snow machines in? Everything before that was just cornflakes painted white.” Bobby grins, shadows jumping across his face. “I, uh, I guess I know a lot of fun facts about snow.”

“Yeah,” says Warren. “Hey, wasn’t there something about a bell?”

“That’s, like, the most quotable line in that movie,” Bobby says. “‘Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.’”

“Oh.” Warren still feels cold, and he doesn’t think it has anything to do with Bobby. Through the haze of whatever it is Apocalypse has been pumping with, he wonders aloud, “How did you get up here?”

No answer.

Warren looks around, but Bobby’s already gone.

Dreams about flying fade into waking nightmares of being strapped down, poked, prodded, perfected. Over time, it gets harder for Warren to discern sleep from wakefulness, ruse from reality. The pain is constant, but always- always, always accompanied by the promise of flight, of soaring through the skies again.

One night Bobby shows up again, perched against a counter facing Warren. “What’s this guy doin’ to you, anyway?”

It feels like being pricked with pins, all up and down his back. “He’s fixing me.”

Something crosses over Bobby’s face. He narrows his eyes, drops down from his seat and walks toward Warren. “What’s he doing that for?” Bobby’s hand against his shoulder is warm, too warm. He’s Iceman. He never was that warm before. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Warr.”

But Bobby’s not right. _Everything_ is wrong with him.

It comes to a point where Warren feels more lucid and aware than before, and he’s sure of it because the pain is sharper, almost unbearable. Breaths come too fast, and it takes everything in him not to cry out.

Bobby’s there, worrying over him, fretting and fussing but accomplishing nothing. Warren’s back feels like it’s on fire, and nothing Bobby can do will help.

The clarity might actually hurt more, though, because it’s slowly occurring to Warren that Bobby wouldn’t be here, _can’t_ be here. It doesn’t make any sense.

“Are you real?” he asks when the pain’s subsided slightly. “Are you really here, Bobby? Or are you a trick?”

Bobby leans in too close, eyes level and barely a breath away. “Oh, Angel,” he says. “You don’t get it? Everything’s a trick.”

Apocalypse keeps his word. The pain escalates and escalates until Warren thinks he must be dying, or that he’s died already and this is hell. Through it all, he can _feel_ them, protrusions jutting out from his back and expanding, except it’s _wrong._ These wings aren’t made of feathers but cold metal shingles, deadly blades, a sick and twisted perversion of what he once had.

When he tries to move them, the components click and clack against each other. It almost sounds like bells.

It’s dark. Warren can’t see Bobby, but he knows that he’s there. “Bobby,” he says in a hoarse whisper. Now that it’s nearly over, now that he’s fit all the pieces of the puzzle together, Warren realizes he would give anything to be dead and in the wreckage of his plane. “Bobby, I’m sorry. Oh God. I’m so sorry, Bobby.”

Bobby says nothing.

When Death wakes up, it’s cold. Unfettered, he stands upright, letting his metal wings span outward. He feels powerful, alert.

A few feet away stands a young man, staring at him with unblinking brown eyes. A remnant of some dream, Death realizes. Only this and nothing more.

He stares back at the stranger, waiting for the inevitable emotional response, and finds that the only feeling to rise up in him is hatred.


End file.
